I load into a new room, the walls have an old paint with a bit of a yellow tinge, the floor is carpeted and the lights flicker every now and then. The floating tablet appears again and say "waiting for players 846/1366". I recognized that number from somewhere but couldn't place my finger on it. I wait around in the room for a bit longer as the counter ticks up, 867, 894, 928, 945, 989, it goes on and on and on. After another five minutes it finishes and the room fades and is replaced by a red desert. My clothes change into what I would assume is the Reaper class equipment is, my weapon ends up being a sword instead of a scythe which is kind of disappointing given the name of the class. Many other people stand around me in fantasy style garb, others in old military esque clothes. Everyone stands around, dazed and confused. I remember where I saw that number before, the total number of students and faculty members at the school, everyone was here. I spotted a few students in my class as well as some teachers. Everyone was frantically looking around and after one kid started staring angrily in my direction, the rest followed suit.
"This is your fault isn't it!" yelled one kid.
"You caused all this!" said another.
"This is all your fault!" Screamed a third.
I was expecting something along the lines of this, afterall, my family has in the past made a mass teleportation incident occur, supposedly at least. I looked around at the crowd of angry faces staring at me, they all hate me now. One of the kids charged me for a punch, I decided to take the hit, or retaliate at the last second, I couldn't decide. But before his hit could land, someone grabbed his hand and stopped him. He stood before the could, holding his wrist tightly, the kid started to wince in pain, he let him go.
"Even if it's his fault that doesn't mean we should get mad," he announced to my surprise, "for now we should focus on figuring out where we are, and if we find proof that it was him, maybe then kill him. But for now we should try to figure something out instead of pointing fingers and continue to be scared."
The crowd grumbled and walked off, then they started panicking again as they went off to look for all of their friends. The kid who helped me scanned the crowd for a few seconds and then looked back at me with a smile on his face.
"Name's Syn, Knight, and if I'm correct your Lukas, right?" he asked.
"Yup thats me," I said, " should I say my last name too or...?"
"Oh, Knight's not my last name, it's my class. Besides, nobody here doesn't know your last name."
"Fair point," I say, "then I guess I should state my class as well, I'm a Reaper."
{[(-<>-)]}
We sit down by a fire away from the rest of the class as night falls upon the world. We talk about theories about how we got here, possible ways out, as well as something I feel are better left off not written down.
"I'm guessing that you don't know exactly what's going on here but know something at the very least." Syn asks me.
"In some sense yes," I say, " whenever my mom had to leave me at home alone, she would send me to a place like his with my grandfather."
"Didn't he get whisked by The Departure in 2105?" Syn asked.
"He did," I start, "but I was able to go somewhere that he was, a place just like this. I'm planning to at some point figure out if this is that place, that way I can get a gist of where we are."
"Well if you said it was like this, the only other place like this is Mars, and I'm pretty sure that Curiosity nor Perseverance had to pick a class to get there." Syn said.
"There were some landmarks that would confirm it for me, this area does feel familiar but if I can find just one of those landmarks I can confirm it." I say.
We talk some more and decide to pack it up and head to bed, the starlight illuminates the rocky red landscape, and slowly I fall asleep.
Thanks for reading the intro to Dimensional Fragment. My current plan is to continuously bust out chapters and release them every Wednesday at around 12:00pm EST, hopefully twice a week eventually, maybe even three times a week. But for now I'm just making it as I go once a week. Thanks for reading and ask questions and give feedback to me